Ever Since Training School
by nightlocksalad
Summary: Clato One Shot: A 9 year old boy, who goes by the name Cato, discovers love in the strangest place. His training school. Will he make his move, or will he ignore it like he was told.


"Cato, what are you looking at?" My older sister, Joanie, asked. "Cato? Cato, look at me!"

"Sorry, what?" I asked, turning a light shade of red.

"Alright, Cato, don't get distracted in class, okay? You wont get a very good mark." She informed me. "You're not here to make friends, or meet girls. You're here so you can represent your district in the future. Oh, and if I were you, I'd start with combat training. It makes everything much easier."

"Yeah, yeah. You told me this yesterday." I rolled my eyes as I began to walk off. "Now, if you keep it up I'm gonna be late."

"Whatever. Just remember that." She shrugged. "You better do good, though."

I walked into the school, and got sent over to my station-hand-to-hand combat. Just what Joanie wanted. Our instructor waved us over and told us to sit down in a group while he explained what they were going to be doing.

"My name is Basil." He began, "Hand-to-hand combat is very important to learn if you're going to be in the games. You will learn plenty of things. You'll learn how to properly attack and defend yourself in many different ways than you'd ever think. You're probably thinking, 'When am I going to use this? I could just use a sword or knife or something.' Well, you're not always going to have a weapon, or have time to get it out. If you don't know how to take down your opponent before he takes down you, you wont be able to get out your weapon."

"That's easy." Some other guy muttered to his friend. "Bring it on."

"What's that, Quinton?" Basil called him out, "If you think it's that easy, why don't you come show us how it's done."

"Fine." Quinton said, standing up. "I'll kick your ass."

"Sure you will." Basil laughed. Quinton walked over, and the two stood in position to fight. He reached out his left arm, about to grab Basil's leg, when Basil grabbed his arm and flipped him onto the ground. "It's not as easy as you thought, is it?"

"No.." Quinton muttered, straightening himself up before he went back to his seat.

"Now," Basil continued on, "As I was saying..."

By the time he finished instructing the lesson, he had Quinton and I face off. We stood ready to fight, then began. I hit him, he hit me, but after a couple minutes of this, I got distracted. I stood looking over at the girls doing knive throwing, but the girl up was the girl I saw this morning. She was absolutely beautiful-stunning, even. I couldn't bring myself to look away from her. She threw the knife, with it hitting the center of the target dead on. Perfect.

"What are you..." Quinton began, then realized I was out of it, when he took me down, pinning me to the ground. "Never look away from the opponent."

"Nice try, Cato." Basil sighed. "You could do better, I know you can. Eyes off the girls."

I turned pink, and sat down while the other students faced off.

Soon it was lunch. I was desperate to find the girl. I walked all around the room, circling a bunch of tables in search for her. When after fifteen minutes, I finally found her sitting by herself, playing with a switchblade. I walked over to her, opening my mouth to say something, but no words could come out.

"Can I help you?" The girl said, then after a short pause she added, "I'm Clove."

"Cato." I said casually, meanwhile I was panicking on the inside, "I couldn't help but notice your knife. Do you mind telling me what kind is it?"

"This one's a switchblade." She told me. "My parents are going to buy me a butterfly knife at the end of the year."

"Really? That's cool." I smiled, sitting down beside her. "My sister has a butterfly knife. But she likes threatening me with it when I bug her."

"Your sister likes knives?" She laughed, "That's cool. I grew up with my parents teaching me how to throw knives properly. So I guess you can say I have a talent with knives."

"Your parents taught you?" I sounded more surprised than I actually was, "My parents would never teach me anything. I mean, I did get in a lot of fights at school, so that's where I learned my hand-to-hand combat before here, but you know, it would have been pretty cool to have someone teach me when I was younger."

"My parents only taught me knife throwing. My older brother tried to teach me how to use a sword, but I preferred knives."

"Really? I love using swords. I've only ever used them once, but it was still really fun for me. I've never actually done knife throwing. Maybe you should show me later."

"Yeah, sure. Sounds fun." She smiled. Omly seconds after, the bell rang informing us we had to go back to our lessons. "After school, today?"

"Today? Sure." I smiled, as we both got up. "I'll see you then, Clove."

"See you later, Cato." She said as she left.

I know I'm only 9 years old and we're just hanging out, but I'm still counting this as a date.


End file.
